Lucky Land Casino, asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Lucky in line at the deli, I guess.
Ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have to say?
Yes?
You do?
In the car before my kids pta meeting? Really?
Yes?
Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
I never win?
And tell well, there you have it.
You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landsloughts dot com play for free right now?
Are you feeling lucky?
No, we're just necessary boyde.
We're gonna be my long eighte plus terms and conditions of pluck sets every details. Okay, Round two, name something that's not boring.
Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Huh ah.
Sorry, we were looking for chumbu Casino to chum. That's right, Chumbucasino dot com as over one hundred casino style games joined today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chum Chumbacasino dot combers eighty plus start the conditions of plus like retails.
Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over at the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumpa Casino. Coincidence, I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumpa Casino's home to hundreds at casino style games. You can play for free anytime, anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet. So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim
you're free. Welcome bonus, that's Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the Chumba line.
No we necessary dail you revoid whereby by lost in terms conditions of eating.
Plus with Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Really beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and broom?
Sorry? Sorry, we're here.
We were getting lucky in the limo when we lost track of time.
No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registered.
Well, in that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting, no purchase necessary boid We're prohibited by lack eighteen plus and conditions of the playing see web Secret Details Loop Tabian.
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening. For the past forty years, Charles Manson has languished in prison for his participation in the Manson Family murders of nineteen sixty nine. He's America's icon of evil, the one who brought down the curtain on the nineteen sixties. He has never been a quiet inmate, however, from his unbridled outburst of rage to his tender acts of generosity,
he makes his presence felt to everyone around him. He inspires awe in other inmates, he cozies up the prison guards who are eager to do him favors, and he is responsible for countless staff transfers within and outside of the institution. This book details the dramatic journey of Willy Mendez, a troubled inmate housed next to the serial killer for more than a year. Willy became institutionalized after repeated violations of the law, including attempted murder and armed robbery. He
is serving a sixty eight year prison sentence. From his initial feelings of contempt toward the aging killer, Willie, nicknamed Boxcar by Manson, traveled to a place of openness and acceptance of the old man's ideas. Over time, he began to defer more and more to Manson without reservation. This is a tale of growth and maturity that contains intimate details and shocking jail house sekstz. Willie shares an insider's view of Charles Manson, his crazy behavior, his whispered confessions,
and is sometimes profound wisdom. Charlie speaks openly about his sexuality, share some details of the tait In LaBianca murders, and relates his childhood experience of being forced to wear a dressed to school. The book that we're featuring thisce evning is Charles Manson Behind Bars, the crazy antics and amazing revelations of America's icon of Evil, with my special guest journalists and author Mark Hewitt. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much. To agreeing to this interview.
Mark Hewitt, Thank you, Dan, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much. Thank you for coming on and talking about a subject that is important to people, especially true crime readers and listeners for many, many years. Again, just a statistic that some people talk about true crime books, and it seems that the lesser educated people talk about in Cold Blood but really helter skelter, even just for the beginning of the number of great books about Charles Manson sold seven million copies to date. So it is
a subject that many, many people are interested in. So thank you for coming on talking about this book, Charles Manson Behind Bars. Now, one of the questions I normally asked him, without giving too much away, what brought you to this project, Charles Manson Behind Bars? Before we get into all the details, how this came about, this faithful turn of events, tell us how you came, why you were compelled, and why did you want to write Charles Manson Behind Bars.
Well, it's a fascinating story.
Dan.
The first book that I published back in two thousand and four was actually a self help book. It's entitled Yes I Can't Change, and in the process of brainstorming about ways in which I could promote them book. The idea came to me, who could benefit more from a self help book than somebody who was behind bars, especially
a high profile criminal. And so from that idea, I began to write a number of high profile criminals throughout the United States, and I put a lot of thought into how I would get letters back from them, because I'm sure they get a lot of letters from media, from fans or from whatever. And I wrote and suggested that they read my book, or offered to have them read my book. And in part of my brainstorming, I thought, in writing Manson, how could I get him to write back?
And so I began a letter, dear mister Manson, I need your help, and a few weeks later he wrote back to me, and then from that we began to correspond a little bit. I told him of some of my ideas about change and asked him some ideas of what his thoughts were unchange. In the process of interacting with him, he introduced me to a man who was selled next to him, who he became quite intimate with.
They would regularly spend four to six hours in an evening or at nighttime talking with one another between cells. And this is Willy Mendez, my co author. I began to correspond with Mendez, and in the course of our interactions, I began to realize that Willie had an awful lot of interesting stories about Manson, and that began our collaborative effort of putting this book together.
Now, how many years did you did you write Charles Manson before you met this Willy Mendez.
I actually met Willy after Manson stopped writing to me. Willie wrote me after he had been transferred out of Corkoran. He was in Pleasant Valley State Prison at the time that he started to correspond with me. But he said, you know I got I got your address from Manson and he said you were an interesting person. In fact, in some of our correspondents with my correspondence with Manson, Manson said that my outlook on life, my positive nature,
reminded him of box Car. Box Car is the nickname that Manson gave to Willie because it made him think of Willie Nelson or Willie box Car Nelson. So he just started calling Willie box Car. That was his nickname. And so I had I had corresponded with Manson maybe ten years and then uh, and then I began to get letters from Willie.
Now, the obviously the letters that the revelations will say that that Charles Manson imparts to Willie are were different than what he would correspond uh say, correspondence in the mail with you over that ten year period. What was the content? I know you talked about ways of change, but in terms of I won't say the difference because we can go into a long thing about that. But
what what was your correspondence limited to? We'll say before we get into what this other these other revelations all include.
My correspondence with Charlie was very very limited. Manson is on his own wavelength, and you ask him a direct question, he doesn't give you a direct answer. You try to engage him on something and he he's on he's on his own Uh, he has his own message. And frequently the letters that I would get from him would be a series of scraps of paper, and it wasn't always clear which scrap was first and which scrap was second. Then it wasn't clear that there was any theme running
through anything that he was saying. So even to try to quote Manson or to try to make sense of a lot of what he said to me is probably a very difficult, difficult task. It wasn't until I began corresponding with Willie that I began to get what I would say would be clear, concise stories with a coherent theme.
I guess, did you find it? It was well worth that ten year correspondence to sort of warm you up to the character of Charles Manson? And did that really help you in terms of the kinds of information that you wanted to get from Willy Mendez and you were able to Were you able to comprehend Charles Manson any better with his previous ten years of correspondence yourself?
To a limited degree? Charles is kind of stuck in the nineteen six because he's in nineteen seventies. His idea is his vocabulary, his turns of phrases are all from the nineteen seventies, And according to Willie, that's what happens to people who are in prison for a long time. They get stuck in the generation that they went into prison.
I don't know that I got a whole lot of profound insights into Manson in corresponding with him, but I did get kind of a sense of who he is and what he stands for, and a lot of it is not clear, not a direct statement. He meanders so much in his writing and his talking that it's hard to really understand his philosophy. I guess I would describe his philosophy as being very eclectic. He'll take a bit
from Christianity, He'll take a little bit from scientology. He's studied hypnotism, and he's been involved in the Church of Satan, and so he collects a few ideas and phrases from each of these and kind of melds them together. It's more of a philosophy of I would describe as being a utilitarian. Whatever is useful, he'll throw out a quote, or he'll say something.
Yeah. This is certainly a mixed bag of a little bit of Eastern philosophy. But sometimes it almost seems confused because it's such a mix of sometimes even almost contradictory of philosophy. So now let's talk about Willie Mendez. Guermo E. Mendez, your co author, tell us first before we like, I like to talk a little bit about of his actual
participation in this. Obviously he gathers this information. But before you were you decided to do this project, you must have wanted to get a very articulate prisoner, not a inarticulate prisoner. Tell us about that decision making process. Of course, you're getting. What you're saying too, is you're getting information that you couldn't get yourself in no shape or form.
But at the same time, was he vetted for any particular that you were anything that you were particularly looking for, like being particularly articulate.
That's a very important question you ask, because I would first say that I wasn't looking to write this book until I got to know WILLI. Corresponding with Manson, never gave me the inpook. It never gave me the idea that any book could come out of it. And it wasn't until discussing with Willy and hearing some of these stories that the idea came about to put together a book. I think one of the strengths of the book is that it's the first book that actually comes from behind bars.
It was largely written by Willy. It's Willy's story. I am the one who kind of edited it. WILLI wrote to me pages and pages and pages of stuff in really tiny print, sometimes that it was difficult for me to actually to read and comprehend what he was getting at. But I put a lot of time into rewriting it and reorganizing it. Willy doesn't have a lot of education, so he just kind of jumped from topic to topic, and it was up to me to sort it all
through and write a comprehensive story. That's the strength of the book. The weakness of the book is that because it's from behind bars, because it's from prison, there's a question about the truthfulness of anything that Willy has said to me. He could have made up some of the stories, he could have exaggerated, so you kind of have to
take it with a grain of salt. This is one prisoner writing about another prisoner well, and compounded with that is the fact that anything that Charles Manson told him may have been true or not true, And so you get a bit of a Chinese Chinese chain of communication of trying to pass this information along. But in all things, I attempted to be as truthful and honest as possible, even going back to Willie and saying here's the story that I'm writing, and showing him rough drafts and saying, now,
is this accurate? Can you testify? Can you verify that what you have told me is true or not? And so we would discuss a lot of things that way. So there always is that question of how true is it. I have found Willie very honest in dealing with me. I think as far as him being in prison and being a prisoner, what he probably deals with is a certain amount of impulsiveness. He is a guy who does something first and then thinks about it later, if at all,
And so he tries to be honest. He tries to be a good person, and I would describe him as somebody who is attempting to be good. He may be dealing with fetal alcohol syndrome. I'm not sure if that's a that's operative in his life, but it's it's his impulsiveness that I think got him into trouble.
He is.
He has been charged with over a dozen felonies, including armed robbery and attempted murder. He is likely a lifer. He there's a good chance that if he ever does get out, he will be a very old man, if at all. So that's kind of a little bit about who he is. And you know, I just I did the best I could and with with what I had to work with, and that's the book, is what came out of it.
Now, in terms of credibility, I understand the thing is that people could say, you know, an inmate could lie, you know, and Magine has been notorious for changing stories and probably lying as well. At least that's the impression that most people have that he can certainly lie with the best of them. But the thing is is that the real evidence that's compelling to most people is that how much of a well a driving force was Willy in terms of this. Was he one of these kinds
of people that goes into you know, he didn't. He got transferred because of this murder of his cellmate, who was a pedophile, almost murder of his cellmate, So he gets transferred to where the bad guys are and that's Charles Manson. But was there any indication, Was there any evidence that he was the kind of guy looking for publicity, looking for a book deal, had aspirations to write a book, had connections like that, somebody had planning the idea. Is
there any evidence of that? And that's the kind of credibility that I think would be in question.
Yeah, Yeah, I saw none of that. He did tell me in our correspondence that being next to Manson, Manson would say thing to him like, well, you're going to be famous now because you're friends with me, and you're part of history, and you're a really important person, probably some of the same stuff that he did to build up the members of his family back in sixty nine, who went so far as to carry out murders for him.
But Willie and talking with me, didn't reach out to me and say, hey, let's write a book, let's do this, let's do that. It was I was the one who made the suggestion after hearing some of his stories. In fact, I don't think he's ever asked me for anything as far as sending him things, giving him cash or whatever. It's never been a relationship like that. So I didn't get the sense that he's a gold digger and that he was looking for fame or looking to write a book. As I say, it was my idea.
Now we'll set the environment here, the background of how all this all occurred and under what kinds of conditions in terms of living arrangements, and you vividly portray that in the book, and it's again very very vivid portrayal talk about Corcoran for State prison in California, and there's fifteen other high profile inmates in this protective housing unit.
Tell us about life in this protective housing unit for Charles Manson and what first Guillermo Willy basically observes upon meeting Charles Manson in this environment.
Well, I appreciate that you're pointing out that it was a very vivid picture that we paint in the book of Prison Life, because that's one of the things that I regularly asked Willy to do, is to say what he saw, what he felt, what colors, what pictures can he paint with words of exactly what he felt, what he experienced. And I think we did a pretty good
job of getting that putting that in the book. Building four is a notorious building in Corkoran, corkorans and Central California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the California Central Valley. It's a building four is designated for high profile criminals. You need to do an awful lot to get housed in Building four. The occupants of Building four were watching the Michael Jackson trial very closely way back in when was that five or six something like that.
The reason being is because if Michael Jackson had been convicted, it's quite likely that he would have ended up in Building four. Building four has a higher ratio of guards to prisoners. Each prison cell is solitary confinement. There's only one prison or per room or per cell. Each cell has additional precautions against breaking in from other prisoners. Each cell has a padlock on it that needs to be manually opened with a key, in addition to the mass
electronics door openings that's controlled from a distance. The building is patrolled by officers who have rifles and shotguns and the whole host of other weapons with them because they know that at a moment's notice, something could break out
to get to building. For you either have to be a high profile criminal and you know as Charles Manson is there, but also Sir Hand, Sir Han the the person who was convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy, and there are other members who other people who are there who have left prison gangs or left gangs. The reason is because they are marked individuals and they are other other gang members are attempting to kill them for having left
their gang, and that was Willie's situation as well. He left his gang as well as being involved in these very many felonies, so as a as a marked man, that's why he ended up in Building four.
And why is Charles Manson marked man? Because the heinous, heineousness of his crimes, the eight eight month pregnant Sharon Tate. Or is it because he's a celebrity and somebody can gain notoriety by just by killing him.
That's that's the latter of what you said. Anybody who kills Charles Manson will have their name go down in history as as the killer of Charles Manson. The same way we never would have heard of Sir Hans Sir Han if he hadn't killed Robert Kennedy. We never would have heard of Mark Chapman. We never would have heard of you know, these other individuals who have killed high profile and high profile people. So there are regularly death
threats on Charlie. There are a lot of lifetime criminals who would love to make a name for themselves just by killing him, and there have been numerous attacks on his life over the past forty years in prison. He has been poisoned, he has had acids, thrown at him. He has had people run at him and swing with their fifths. So he lives a very precarious existence.
And Charles Manson's eighty years old. I believe this year.
In November he will be eighty up. Correct.
Yeah, Now, tell us about what Willie Mendez observed about Charles Manson being this person that has had all these death threats, that is frightened of being poisoned, frightened of people stealing stuff from a momentos from his cell. So what does this, you know, manifest itself in terms of behavior for Charles Manson and.
Willy noticed a lot of paranoid behavior on the part of Manson. He was afraid of people coming into his cell, he was afraid of going out of his cell. In fact, he could go for months at a time without coming out. He would just wash up in his sink in the cell and stay inside. It would only be every couple months that he would get out to go for a shour or go for a walk around the out in
the yard. In fact, he bragged a Willie one time that he could go for a year without leaving his cell, and when he did leave the cell, when he got back he was always paranoid that somebody had gone in and the guard had gone in, or a guard had let somebody go in, and so he was He asked all kinds of questions, like, you know, has my stuff been messed with? Has anybody been in here? So there's
a certain amount of paranoia that Willy observed. But Willy All was also quite surprised that Manson was so old and so frail. His memories of Manson or video clips on television of Manson during his heyday during his trial, how he was a young, vibrant person in his thirties. Well, now that he's seventy nine, Willi's, you know, quite shocked at what he looks like. I just got a letter a couple of weeks ago from Willie. He has been transferred back to Building four in Corkoran, so he still
has contact with Manson. He is not selled beside him and doesn't have a close relationship with him as he once did, but he's still able to let me know what's going on. And he said that Manson is confined to a wheelchair almost totally.
Now.
He can get out of his wheelchair and walk few steps, but then he gets winded. And so he gets back into his wheelchair and he generally gets pushed around the yard when he does go out to the yard for some exercise or for some fresh air.
Now, tell us about before there's there's so much information in this book that it's somewhat surprising, But you dedicate a whole chapter to mail for Charles Manson. Tell us about the situation of fan mail. And again, if people have been listening lately, there's news. You know, Charles is always in the news. But tell us about mail.
Yeah, I came to learn that no prisoner in the United States receives more mail than Charles Manson. He practically needs his own postmaster general to take care of all the mail that he receives. In fact, now I understand as of the last year or so, he's got a number of his fans who live in the area on the outside who received the mail for him and sort it for him and correspond with people that they feel that they need to do so because there is just
so much mail that he gets. But when Willie was with him, he was still receiving his own mail, which would be several packs of mail a day, and he would sort through it to I guess. He'd been receiving so much mail for so long that he was able to put it into categories, and a lot of it was just junk mail. He got letters from music groups, rock and roll groups from around the globe who wanted some tune from him, or some lyrics from him to
write a song. He would get a lot of mail from people involved in religious organizations, whether they be Christian organizations or Buddhist organizations or whatever, some of them asking for donations, some of them asking for his endorsement, some of them asking for ideas. He was just astounded sometimes at all the mail he got, because he never went out and solet mail. It was simply because of his high profile nature that people would be contacting him. Reporters
would contact him from around the globe. Authors would contact him. There are a lot of people who want to write books on Charles Manson. In fact, over one hundred books now have been published on him, and so he was just amazed at how much mail he got. Some of it was personal mail. He would correspond with various individuals. If a letter interested him, he would write back to somebody.
But even back then, in his younger years, he couldn't correspond with everybody who he wanted to, just because there was simply so many letters coming to him.
Yeah, incredible, incredible fan mail.
And what was really interesting is he would use the materials that were sent to him. If it was a magazine, he would use the paper for some of his artwork behind bars, he would save cardboard, or he would blank pieces of paper he would use in sending letters. Some of the letters I received were like a page from a magazine and a little bit written on, or somebody would have sent him a note and so he would scratch off what that person had written him and then
write something to me on that slip of paper. So he was he was very aware of the material use of all of the stuff that he received.
Now, how exactly did it when you first talk about the first sort of intimate conversation that Charles Manson has with Willie Mendez set the stage for that because are they really are they seeing eye to eye or are they talking around a corner? Tell us about how this conversation goes down. Really, what is conveyed in that initial intimate conversation that seems to start the ball rolling in term of a relationship, a rapport between.
Them, the two of them, their relationship. Yes, well, the first time will he saw Manson was when he was led to the cell in the first place. He walked by and he saw a variety of people, and he noticed that the man in the cell next to him was kind of a slight, short man who was very pale and a little grandpa is I think the way he described him, and didn't think much of him. And then once he got into his cell, they began to talk back and forth. They couldn't see one another from
cell to cell. There was a large wall between the two of them, but by talking out of one side of the cell, they could talk to each other. Willie described as Manson as being very hard of hearing, and so that there were times that he had to raise his voice quite a bit just to be heard, even though they were only you know, a foot or two
apart from each other. When they were trying to talk in in deference to other prisoners, they tried to keep their voice down as much as possible so they wouldn't interfere with anybody else and nobody would overhear their conversation. But still Manson regularly asked him to speak up because he couldn't couldn't hear him? When Willie first met Manson and was told that he was selled beside Charles Manson, he was kind of shocked, and he was a little
bit suspicious too. He didn't know whether this inmate beside him really was Manson or not. For all he knew that it was. It was a joke for all new prisoners. I'm Charles Manson. Yeah, so am I. So he waited till his first shower time, and when he went to his first shower time, he peered in that cell again to see the person that was talking to him, and sure enough he could. He noticed that it was Charles Manson, and that he had the scar on his between his eyes of the swastika.
Right, and how was what was the first conversation? What was that first exchange between the two that seemed to beyond just a small talk of prison, but that they seemed to then again, like I say, established sort of a rapport, and that Willy knew that Charles at least trusted him or liked him enough to impart what he did.
Well. When he first got there, he was impressed that Manson reached out to him. It was Manson who knocked on the wall and started talking to Willy and kind of welcoming into the building and being very friendly to him. Manson was very generous with a lot of the things that he had because of his high profile nature and
things that people send him. He has got quite a large bank account in prison, and he's able to get as much goodies from the canteen as he wants, and so he's very generous in giving soups and packets of food and chips and whatnot other inmates. And so even before he had actually met Willie, he was sending him some stuff between the cells. I'm not exactly sure what the first shipment of goods was, but he's provided him
with a lot of a lot of good stuff. And Willy was quite impressed with this and began to like Manson right off, just from his generosity, as far as willis ahead, go ahead, go ahead, just from the the the original I'm not sure which story that he shared with Willy that gave him the indication that he was being honest or that he was he was being real, but at all times Manson demanded that other people be real with him and tell him the truth, and Willie
got the sense that, at least at first, that Manson was being very honest with him and telling him things like that were and so he came to trust Manson an awful lot at the beginning. And he was suspicious at first. He you know, he being in prison for so long. Willi is not a very trusting person of others because he knows inmates abuse and use one another.
So he was a little bit wary. But he did come to trust Manson, and in fact, it caused problems for him because he began to trust him just a little bit too much and just assume that everything that he was saying was was true. And it wasn't until much later that Willie was able to look back and realize that, you know, maybe he placed a little bit too much faith in Manson and maybe he was being manipulated, much like his followers, the members of the Manson family were back in the nineteen sixties.
Sure, now, did he ask any specific questions or was it Manson again dictating? And so it was just maybe questions in response, but was it Manson felt like talking? And then all of these subjects came to pass, And what was the first One of the first subjects that Manson touched on.
You know, I don't know if what the first subjects were. The picture I've gotten from Willie is an ongoing relationship where they would just sit and chew the fat as they were talking between cells, and as they spent more and more hours, they just talked about this, that and everything. And Willie wasn't the type of person. He's not the type of person to try to pry into other people's lives and to find out this bit of information or
that bit of information. It was more just getting to know each other and their lives and what's going on and how prison works. And the sense I get is that it was just a very gradual relationship that grew, but they became over time very intimate and shared with one another at a quite deep level.
Now, some of the information that that that I found completely new and actually kind of surprising, was some of this stuff you've on earthed about his childhood. So tell us, according to what Willie has said that Charles has told him about his childhood, tell us about some of the information that you have discovered in this book about Charles Manson's childhood.
Yeah, there are a lot of different stories about Manson's childhood. And it depends on which book you read, because Manson has changed his story so many times, and other relatives of Manson have told tales very different from him. But to Willie, Manson said that he had a very difficult childhood. He was very he was abused by his mother. He was born to a sixteen years old a young woman who had just turned sixteen, and she not only being young, but she acted young. She was very much into partying
and being very irresponsible. So she during his childhood years would often be left with a neighbor, left with a relative, left with a friend. His mother would say, can you take care of Charlie just for a couple hours. I'll be back in a couple hours. Well, then his mother wouldn't come back for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, and apparently this happened on a regular basis.
At the same time, I understand that Manson's mother was interviewed before her death a number of decades ago, and she said that Manson was a very, very privileged child and he was kind of spoiled, and that maybe some of his attitudes happened because he was spoiled and given everything he wants wanted, and was kind of pampered. So it's hard to say what exactly is true. But a couple stories that Willie passed on to me and that I have read in other places as well, is that
his mother sold him for a picture of beer. I guess she had an alcohol problem, according to Charlie, and was more interested in drinking than in being a mother, and so at one point she said, you know, if you give me a picture of beer, I'll let you have my son and raise him. I don't know exactly the circumstances, but I understand family members followed up and went and ran and got Manson and got Charlie and brought him back and said, you know, that's not the
way you behave as a mother. There's another story where this is what Manson told Willie, is that Charlie was raised by an uncle at one point, left with an
uncle for at least several months. I'm not exactly sure the time frame was exactly how it went, but on a day of school, I think the first day that he went to school at this new location, while he was being taken care of by an aunt and uncle, I believe it was if I have the facts correct, that Manson was picked on at school and he was teased or bullied in some sense, and that Manson ran all the way home and was crying. Well, his uncle found him and noticed that he was crying and said,
you know, boys don't cry. This isn't how you behave and told him, this is what you need to do. I'm going to put a red dress on you and tomorrow you're going to go to school. Excuse me, You're going to go to school wearing this red dress. You're going to find that kid who picked on you. You're going to go up to him and you're going to punch him in the face and you were going to beat him until he submits or until you get beaten up. But either way, this is what you need to do.
And according to Manson, he wore he was forced to wear this red dress to school, and of course the next day when he shows up at school with a red dress, he got tea eased. But at some point during that day he went up to the kid who bullied him the day before and punched him in the face and totally dominated him. So how how true that story is is is open to speculation. But Willie was not the only person who told me that story I have.
I have also read it in other books, and I don't have a reference at the moment.
Right right now. Some of the philosophy of Charles Madsen he's espoused before, but tell us what, Willy, some of the things that Charles Madsen has said to Willie and the kinds of kind of language he uses to express himself.
He he uses a lot of Eastern philosophy, so he he's interested in the ideas that contradict a lot of his philosophy is you know what will work, what will help him get by in prison? And what was interesting. One thing that he shared with Willie is the fact that he's not as crazy as he makes himself out
to be. He is listed as a mental illness case behind bars, and that he has mental issues, and that he is supposed to be taking medicine for it, whether that's paranoia or schizophrenia or whatever it is that he's he's dealing with. He openly admitted to Willy that often he acts crazy to benefit from it. If he acts crazy, then other inmates won't pick on him, They'll think, oh,
he's just insane. Let's just ignore him. And it's probably a trick that he learned even when he was a child, because he spent a lot of time in reform schools, in juvenile halls and in various lock up units, and so that being being such a small person he's only about five three or five four, that even as a child he had to learn to maneuver and negotiate and figure out a situation when there were a lot of people around him who were a lot bigger than him. So one of the tricks that he learned was to
act crazy. Well, today, if you talk to people about Charles Manson, they'll say, oh, yeah, he's crazy, he's insane, he's just completely whacked out. Well, I think he does deal with a lot of psychiatric issues, but I think he is also playing a part, and he's he's very open about the part that he plays when he is interviewed on TV. For instance, he told Willie that he often dramatizes what he's doing and he plays to the camera.
He knows more about producing TV programs than the producers of the TV program themselves know, and he tries to set things up so that he's a star, so that he's a person who craves attention and knows how to get attention and knows how to be an entertainer. And I think that that draws a lot of people too him, So that when you see him interviewed on TV or you see video clips of him, it's important to take it with a grain of sault because a lot of it may not be as honest as it appears.
Now, he does get around to talking, and we won't get into all of that, will leave it for the readers to discover themselves. But he does mention the family obviously. He talks about things like that they had gay men in their group, using it as gay hookers bringing in money. He talks about Bobby Buissel, He talks about Lennya Kazabian, he talks about the murder of Gary Hinman. A lot of people that who are big fans of Manson sort
of know the way. You know, how forthright again is he about his involvement, But tell us what some of the things that he he has said about the family itself and talk a little bit about that.
Well, if there's one thing that Charlie is good at, it's not taking responsibility. He to this day denies any involvement in the murders of nineteen the nineteen sixties and blames it on the members of his family. He doesn't point out or doesn't acknowledge, for instance, that he was very manipulative in the way he gathered members of his family and the way he treated them and worked on them. Willy, in thinking about Manson, came to the conclusion that Charlie
was part crime boss and part cult leader. And if you understand the role of a crime boss and you understand the role of a cult leader, how the two of those could work together, that kind of gives you an insight into how Charlie worked with the members of his family. He looked to gather people around him, and so he would sixties. He was not the only person
doing that. There were many people to who are trying to portray themselves as gurus and appear very wise and appear as leaders to try to get people to follow them.
Well.
He was sometimes successful and very oftentimes he was not. But he would go to public locations and would get up and start to speak, and people thought, wow, he's really cool. He would bring his guitar along and he'd play a song and different people who were looking for a guru to follow. Some of them would consider him and listen to what he had to say, and some ended up following him. But once he had people following them, he used a lot of classic cultic techniques to control them.
He used sleep deprivation, he used food deprivation, he would use sex to control people. He would he'd do whatever he had to to control these other people that became members of the Manson family. He was very good at sizing up somebody else. He's extremely skilled in human relationships because he can look at somebody and get to know what it is they need, what it is they what
their fears are, what their lifelong desires are. And he would actually change himself and kind of become whatever he needed to become or do whatever he needed to do to gain control over other people. And so a lot of people who initially went to follow him and hang out with him were quite unprepared for what would happen next. But a lot of his actions appear like some of the things that David Koresh did as with his followers, or Jimmy Jones did with his followers in Guyana, in
gaining control over them and manipulating them. But at the same time he was very skilled at using other people to make money and threatening other people and demanding that he'd be the top dog. And so you kind of understand his activities as a crime boss. He was involved in stealing cars, in fencing, stolen property, and prostitution, in working with other people who were involved in other crimes, so he was completely attached to the underworld as far as illegal activities.
Now, he talks about what likely happened in the two separate incidents, the Sharon Tate and then the La Bianca murders two separate days, But he talks about that they were, you know, the family itself was really just looking for cash and stuff and not or any kind of no violent mission was intended by him, was instructed by him,
had been spoken about him, whatsoever. And he talks about them just being you know, these crazy girls, and again avoids suspiciously talking about tex Watson, but tell us how he justifies or rationalize how this could have possibly happened, that these people are butchered.
Well, he kind of puts up his hands in the air and say, gee, I don't really know how this happened. These were just people that I hung out with, and they just happened to go and do this. But the truth that Willy kind of got kind of uncovered was that, you know, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he was wise enough to keep his hands clean of the of the evidence that he would have other people do things for him so that he wouldn't be accused
of doing it. And this is something that he probably learned early from stealing cars and selling stolen cars and sensing stolen property, is that if you get other people to do it and they get caught, you don't you don't go down for the crime, so that you know the State of California has said that he is guilty of conspiracy to murder and guilty of murder by association, and so he has been given the death penalty, even
though it was commuted to life. I think that's probably an appropriate sentence for the man who has done these things and is responsible for them, even though to this day he does not take responsibility. He says that, you know, these people did what they wanted to do and it was their choice. But I think if you look very closely at the stories, you realize that he was very involved in these activities as well.
The interesting part of after the initial stories about Charles Manson that over the years as I followed this to a certain degree and you can never keep up with all the incredible information, But there was talk of him being a musician and his connection with the Beach Boys, and then later with that actual Rose took a song that Manson had fooled around with. In terms of at least lyrics and maybe a bit of structure, let's talk about how at least your theory just for a second,
on how this all could have happened. He's a musician, he thinks maybe he's going to have stardom. People are listening to him. He has again, he's learnt things in his extended stay in prison and in the school of hard knocks how to manipulate people. He needs things, he needs people to do things. He's a small, small man and needs to get a bye. But what do you think really happened in terms of you know, this musician that fails and can't get a contract and then people
are butchered. Tell us how on earth what could have happened?
Well, I don't know that. I have a bitter theory than anybody else. I understand that when he murdered the Sharon Tate and her house guests, that location was where Terry Melcher had been living a month or so prior to that. And Melcher was a person who had expressed some interest in Charles Manson, and according to Manson, Melcher had agreed to give him a recording contract and record his music and make him a star. But Melcher later.
Denied that and and said that, yeah, he went and checked out the Manson family one time and listened to them sing and wasn't really impressed, and so he didn't he didn't follow.
Up on it. So exactly what Manson heard or what Melcher said, maybe something like Melcher had said to him, you know, yeah, that sounds interesting. I'll give you a call if if I'm interested in recording further or you know, or I'll call you, don't call me, type of thing. But Meltzer was living at the address that Sharon Tate
was living at the time. She was married to Roman Polanski, and Polanski was in Europe filming Rosemary's Baby, and Sharon Tate was about eight and a half months pregnant, and she had a number of friends staying with her at the house that day, and it was to that location that Charles Manson apparently sent text Watson and the three girls to go there and do something exact revenge or what exactly Manson was hoping to accomplish by that it would be pure speculation, But at the same time, Manson
was telling a lot of his followers about coming race wars, and part of his role as a cult leaders, he was making these apocalyptic prophecies about what was going to happen in the United States and in the world. Was
painting this doomsday scenario for everybody. Part of playing into all of this is that he was making all of these prophecies but not a whole lot was happening, and he had to kind of save face in front of his followers to show them that yes, bad things are happening, and so that the murders may have been related to that.
What he did share with Willie was that one of his followers was charged with murder and was sitting in prison at the time, and he told Willie that he just speculated that maybe the girls had this idea that they were going to spring this member of the Manson family out of prison. When another murder was took place that also had writing on the wall, and so that it was set up to look like a copycat murderer. And then you know, the Manson family member would be
sprung from prison. But you know, Manson just kind of speculated that that was the reasoning behind it.
Yeah, and this guy that's had something to do at least with access reafter the fact. At the very very least, he knew the next day about the Sharon Tate murders. He knew about these things happening. So and you know, in the in the eyes of the law, that's very culpable. Anyway, they theorized that he he was a mastermind, and people have you know, argued that fact for years that you know, maybe he wasn't, but certainly everybody believes that he's in the right place.
Yeah, and at very least he knew about it afterwards and didn't come forward. And according to Tex Watson, he went the next night. He went along and said, I'm going to show you how it's done. And so with the labyankas he was actually present at the scene. He went inside and and tied up the labiancas and then left the house and then left it to his family
members to go back inside and to do whatever. So at very least he knew exactly what was going to happen to them because of what had happened the night before, and indeed they were murdered that next night.
What did Willie? Because Willie has this experience again too trusting, maybe too impressed by the guy's celebrity and you know, this patchwork of ideas that he's been reading about for years and years and again people learned. He describes him as having sort of a presence even though he's this diminutive little man. He carries himself a certain way. So there's a certain admiration obviously that's been built during this relationship, and he's he's very flattered that Charles Manson is is
imparting all this intimate information to him. There are other things that are almost laughable in terms of him being an environmental you know crusader and his ideas on you know, peace and brotherhood. But tell us about some of those just for the heck of it, some of those things, Charles Manson's ideas and philosophies about some of those things that Willy had learned about.
Well, to answer the first part, of your question. First, Willie was quite impressed at how important he became just by his association with Manson. Manson is a very charismatic person, and because of his celebrity and because of his charisma, people are attracted to him and notice him and know
what he's doing and know where he is. When word got out that Willy was spending a lot of time with Manson and Manson was becoming very close to Willie, Willy began to notice that other inmates started to treat him differently. And for a person who has never received a whole lot of attention in his life, it was
quite something for him to behold. Willy noticed that prison guards would come up to him and ask him questions about Manson or try to strike up a conversation to learn more about what Manson had been telling him, and other inmates had started to defer to Willy and treat Willy like he was an important person. And I think this quite took Willy by surprise when all of this happened. As far as philosophy, yeah, environmentalism is a big thing
with Manson, and I noticed that too. In my correspondence with him, I would ask him about protecting the environment, and he would talk about how important old redwood trees are and how his philosophy of life he describes as atwa at w a, which is air, trees, water, animals, and how human beings have to uphold these and protect them, and that Manson loves animals, loves nature, loves wildlife, but
he hates people. That's kind of what it really came to the conclusion of, because people chop down trees, pollute the air, pollute the water, and kill animals. I tried to engage Manson a little bit on these these activities and kind of get a sense for more profound thinking on those points, but I didn't get very far. I made the observation that, you know, maybe if people planted two trees for every one tree that they cut down, we could make this world better than it is right now.
While he was not interested in hearing anything like that at all. He didn't want a single tree to be chopped down.
Ever, Right was there anything You wrote them for two years and you say the correspondence was limited in its scope in terms of what you talked about, Willie. He talked about all kinds of intimate things, whether they were all completely true, but he did. He did say a lot of things that would you know, he didn't really have much.
Of a filter.
If he's talking about the Gary Hinman murder, he's talking about you know, his family, the girls themselves.
Yeah, was there.
Anything that you found out of this entire project, and you've been living with us for quite a while, is there anything surprising or let's say, surprising profound that Manson has had to say with all this time in jail and all his experiences, is anything profound that Manson has to say?
Well, I think almost every sentence that Manson utters has a certain level of profundity to it that if you sat and thought about it and think, wow, that's really that's really cool, or in the term in the words
of the nineteen sixties, that's really groovy. Where he talks about the importance of clean air, clean water, protecting trees, pretty much anything that he says, you can say, yeah, there's some wisdom to that, But there is so much contradiction and so much hypocrisy, and a lot of what he says that, at the same time as has profound, a lot of what he says comes across as being
quite foolish. You know, he talks about the importance of protecting the environment and doing all of these things, but you can say to him that in all of the time that he was out of prison and living a free life, what exactly did he do to clean the
air and protect the environment. And it becomes quite obvious that what he was involved in was breaking laws and controlling other people, and that's what seemed really important to him, to the point where you begin to realize that his philosophy of life is an opportunity for him to criticize other peop people and maybe even gain control of them by playing on their guilt. He will say something like, well, you're accusing me of doing all of these things, but
what are you doing? What is the human race doing? We're involved in wars, we're involved in pollution, we're involved in killing people. Why is what I've done so bad? Or even if I have done those how bad could it be? Because I'm on the good side, I'm doing these things for a reason. And you start to realize that that there's kind of a lack of profound thinking on his part. It's more of a defensive excuse making
and not taking responsibility for his own actions. So as far as his philosophy of life, and I've spent some time trying to untangle it and get a clear sense of what it is that he stands for and what
it is that he believes. But there are so many contradictions, and his conversations and his dialogues jump around from scientology to Buddhism, to Christianity, to environmentalism or to whatever is that it's hard to say that there's a cohesive whole, that there is a well thought through philosophy of life that he upholds. What does Charles Manson more profound than what you were you were hoping?
No, No, I've never really read anything that really jumped off the page that hasn't been written probably better by someone else. I mean, obviously he has ideas that I would agree with, except it's just ironic and almost laughable because he will not ever be seen as an environmental crusader. Somehow, it just won't won't fit. What does Charles Manson's believe or or what does Charles Manson think about his friend Willie and Mendez being a co author of a book.
What does he what's the reaction so far, as far as you can tell.
I wish I had my publisher send Manson a copy of the book, and I have not heard back since then. I heard from a writer of the Rolling Stone magazine that Manson is terrified of other people writing books about him, so he will not cooperate with other people as soon as he finds out that they're writing a book. And when he talks to media, people's first question he asks him is are you trying to write a book on me? Because I don't want any more books written about me.
He doesn't, I guess, doesn't appreciate a lot of the books that have been written already. I repeatedly asked Mendez Willie if it was okay for him to write a book on Manson because he had been so close to him, And I repeatedly asked him if he was going to get into trouble for saying any of the things that he was saying, because I was worried about his safety because Manson has a lot of friends, and if he at one time was very intimate with man and then was seen as betraying him, he could be in a
lot of trouble. But Willie said that he was confident that what he was doing was okay, and that Manson would be okay with it. Now, whether whether he has heard that from him directly himself, I don't.
Know right And in terms of what is presently, where is Willy Mendez? Oh, you say he's right back in units war again. Yeah.
I've joked around with him saying that he's making a tour of the prison system in California because he goes to one jail and is there for a couple of years and then requests the transfer to somewhere else, and then he doesn't like it there and that's the worst institution he's ever been in, so he requests a transfer to somewhere else. So he does skip around a lot.
But he is back in corkorand right now and has very limited contact with Manson, But I continue to write him, and Willie is very excited about writing a follow up book. He's more excited than I am. But he wants to write a book on a lot of the high profile inmates and guards that he has met during his travels
through the California prison system. And he's listed for me some thirty high profile individuals, including rock musicians and former NFL players and notorious inmates that he has come across. Whether that becomes a book or not, I'm not sure. My schedule is a little bit heavy right now, so I am not I'm not in the market for working on another book at this time with him, but we'll see what happens.
Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, it's very interesting too with all the programs now The Killer Speaks and all these programs where you're getting guys from prison cells talking, so it's very talked to an author and someone involved with the program and they said, oh, yeah, there's a lineup of people that want to talk. So everybody wants to be famous. It's a phenomena that just really sort of really helps I guess, you know, when people want to talk.
As far as as far as a journalist. Yeah, that's great to have people coming forward.
So I want to thank you for coming on and talking about this. For those who are interested in contacting you, you do the Facebook thing. Do you have a website for people with more information and you'll operate a blog or anything like that. Give us your contact information where people can contact you, so inclined.
The easiest way is through Facebook. I have a page set up entitled Charles Manson behind Bars I've posted a number of recent pictures of Manson. There's a picture Willy there and if anybody wants to contact me, they can contact me through that page. I'm also the editor of Radians and Inches, which is a quarterly journal designed dedicated to the search for the Zodiac serial killer. I'm working on a book on the Zodiac which may actually become
a trilogy. I have about three books worth of information so that I'm working on that currently, and there's also a page on Facebook dedicated to that Radians and Inches or else. You can check my website Radiansaninches dot com.
Yeah, very interesting. You'll have to get a hold of us and let us know about that when that book is going to come out, and we'll have you on and talk about that, because again that's one of the killers that have fascinated American and international audiences for years. So I wish you the best of luck with that and be interesting to hearing about that when it does happen.
That would be great. I would love to do that, and thank you so much for having me today.
Well, thank you very much. Mark. People have been listening to Charles Manson behind Bars with my special guest Mark Hewitt thank you very much, Mark, have a great night.
You're welcome and bye now, good good night.